


One Door Opens

by CavannaRose



Series: Rose Wilson Fics [23]
Category: Deathstroke the Terminator (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Corpse Desecration, Corpses, Curses, Gen, Historical Inaccuracy, Non-Sexual Slavery, Roanoke, Slavery, Time Travel, Violence, Virginia, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2019-10-24 14:04:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17705654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CavannaRose/pseuds/CavannaRose
Summary: A door opens, and everything comes undone. Rose Wilson goes on a time travel adventure and hates every second of it.





	1. Chapter 1

Up three streets and down another two. Northampton was everything Rose hated about everything. Rich, snobby, and brimming with criminals. With a muted sound that could very well be called a growl, she turned another corner, just in time to see her prey pause and check the area. She ducked, slowly counting to twenty before raising her head again. Better to risk losing the target than to be seen. She could always find them again later. Luck, however, was on her side for once. As she peered around the corner of the carved stone wall that served as a fence here, she watched him disappear into the last house on the left. “Gotcha, fucker…”

Reveling in the moment, she still paused to run down her weapon list. Two katanas, crossed on her back. A dagger on each arm, just under the cuffs of her suit. A dagger tucked into each of her boots, inner calf. Two small pistols strapped to her belt. Garrotte wire in her left pouch. Poison in the right, though she wasn’t sure what kind. Two adrenaline inhalers and three adrenaline needles, just in case, front pouch. Tying her mask a little tighter, she grinned darkly. Oh this little shitstain wasn’t even going to know what hit him.

She’d followed the fucker all the way across the damn city, and for what? Some frippery or gewgaw he’d swiped from the Pear Valley Yeoman’s cottage exhibit. She’d been contacted by, if you’d believe it, the Northampton Historic Preservation Society. It was so ridiculous she almost wanted to cry at the thought. But Noah said they were paying good coin, they claimed the item was from Roanoke originally. That, and only that, had finally got Rose’s attention. Now here she was, stalking through perfectly manicured lawns to spread fear among the Nouveau Riche. What a joke.

Hoping the wrought iron gate, Rose darted around to the backyard, scoping out the sprawling two story manor. As best as she could tell, it was a renovated plantation building. Naturally. Why wouldn’t people who denied where their wealth came from live on the roots of that oppression? Suppressing a snort of disgust she listened to the door, the quiet from inside comforting her. She tried the handle, willing the thing not to squeak or otherwise give her away, and it opened…

…into a loud and bustling room full of people, mostly African American women, working on and around a massive cook top, and broad counter space. Their dresses and aprons billowed around them as they bustled about, and she couldn’t do anything but stare. This noise… shouldn’t she have heard it from outside? It was warm and bright inside, and the calling of instructions from one end of the room to the other was damn near deafening. Shaking, Rose slowly pulled the door closed, resting her back against it and looking around a yard that was no longer the one she had entered.

Gone was the perfectly manicured grass, the neighbouring houses, and the power lines. Instead there was a sprawling yard… a chicken coop? Were those actual fucking chickens? Shit fuck damn. They were definitely chickens. A series of small huts sat to one side of the yard, with neither doors nor windows, what looked to be forest behind them, and then fields as far as the eye could see. Everywhere she looked, people were working and walking, most of them with serious expressions and hunched shoulders. Brown faces kept their eyes down, skirts flourished in the breeze, and barefoot children scampered about with small bundles. It was like a nightmare with no end.

Over by what looked like a water pump and a large wooden tub, laundry hung on a line, and Rose made a snap decision. Really, what else was she going to do? Darting across the yard, she raided the line for a pair of trousers and a buttoned linen shirt that might just fit her, and then she fled to the trees. Behind her she heard someone shout, but she wasn’t stopping to see if it was her they were shouting at. She was in the wrong outfit for whatever madness she had just fallen into, but she wasn’t ready to think of that yet. She had to change, and then figure out where she was, or when she was, and then she had to get the fuck out of here. This was… this was bad. As she watched horses pulling a carriage from where she hid in the bushes, Rose had a feeling that life was not going to get easier any time soon.

She sat amidst the shrubbery, mask clutched in a hand that hadn’t stopped shaking yet, and focused on breathing as she carefully stripped off her costume and armor. There was no way she could wear any of this and not stand out, but she wasn’t losing her weapons. No fucking way. She found places to tuck all of it back onto her person, even fixing her belt up under the shirt where it wouldn’t show. It wasn’t nearly as accessible as at her waist, but it was there. All that left were her katanas, and she winced. How the hell would she hide them? Fuck. Where was she going to store her armor and costume?

Grimacing at the necessity, she dug a hole, carefully wrapping one of her blades in the armor and tucking it into the dirt. With a whispered apology, she buried it again, fixing the second blade at her hip. There was no way she was going without a sword. Surely swords were used back whenever she was, right? There were clearly slaves here, and they’d had swords in the civil war, so she was probably, maybe, not going to stick out too badly. Maybe she was justifying herself, but as her hand caressed the kashira, she had no regrets. It was like her comfort item, and she wasn’t letting it fall far from her. Now all she had to do, was figure out where she was, and when, find somewhere to stay, and figure out how the hell to get back home.


	2. Chapter 2

One week. She had been stuck in this gods-forsaken century for an entire seven days, and she was not loving it. A few decisions had to be made quickly, and she’d set herself up as best she could. First, she bound her chest flat. Being a pretty boy looking for work was going to be so much easier than being a homeless woman, that was true regardless of the time, but increasingly so the farther back in history you looked. Then, she had to find herself somewhere to stay. With no money, at least none that she could use here, she found herself a place in the woods to set up, at least for the interim. She wasn’t the only one roughing it around these parts; that was for damn sure.

Ideally she wanted to get out of Northampton, head inland some maybe. The coastal city, if you could call it a city, was ideal in that even someone who stuck out as much as she did was less… impressive, but still. She needed information, maybe magic. Voodoo was a thing, right? When was New Orleans founded? Rose shook her head, laughing at herself. This was fuckery of the highest order, but there was nothing in her life that said stacking fuckery on top of fuckery would solve anyone’s problems, particularly not her own. She’d finally nicked a newspaper, at least, so now she knew _when_ she was, and the news wasn’t great. 1750. Who the fuck wanted to go back to 1750? Not this Wilson, no way no how.

Finally, as situated as she was going to get, tired of feeding herself on raccoon and squirrel, she marched her bare feet back into town to find work. Surprisingly, despite being a complete unknown, and sticking out as much as long silver hair and an eye patch would make a body, she found work fairly easily. Going by her brother’s name, Joey, she found that her enhanced strength helped sell the story that she was a boy, since no one here would believe a woman could cart around heavy barrels like they were nothing. By the end of the first day, she’d found herself a modicum of acceptance amidst the dock workers, and her foul mouth often put theirs to shame.

Not all the labourers were free men, and her disregard for the hierarchy had gotten her in trouble twice over the past several days, but Rose didn’t give a fuck. The few times the dock overseer came by to chew her out, she’d just lowered the good old one eyed Wilson glare at him, and the blustering pustule had backed away. She didn’t really care if he liked her or not, so long as he paid her the laughingly small handful of coins that counted as a day’s earnings here. Thirty three cents or shillings, or whatever, a day, or a sixth of a pound of tobacco a day, as these wack jobs measured it. Virginia was without a doubt, the worst place ever. Who used tobacco as a currency?

The real insult was that if she wanted to eat, or consider renting a room, she was getting paid in tobacco notes that she couldn’t cash for actual tobacco. She was itching for a smoke something fierce, but she’d had to spend her first three day’s pay on shoes if she wanted to stick to working by the docks. The only good that came of it all was Old Saul, her partner at the docks, who claimed he had Indian blood dating back to Roanoke. The others laughed his stories off, but considering what she’d been after when she went all fuckity boogedy, Rose was inclined to listen. The man claimed he was fifty though he looked closer to a hundred, but with a little encouragement he told his story.

Rose knew about the Roanoke colony disappearing, even back in her own time that was a thing people were wondering about, but Saul’s interest was keener than any she had ever heard. He spoke about the missing colonists like it hadn’t been over 150 years since the inhabitants were found missing. Instead he wove her stories about how his ancestors had fled something dark and evil, taking shelter with local native tribes and intermingling with them before heading to the mainland and safety. Rose chewed her lip, rolling the stories in her mind, like stones being polished, imperfections and inconsistencies falling away until the few kernels of truth shone through.

Fact. Roanoke had emptied without a trace of the former inhabitants. Fact. No one knew what really happened. Fact. This old bugger had in his possession a map that he claimed detailed the location of the missing Roanoke colony. Now, what was she going to do about it? Was it that insane, thinking that maybe something relating to Roanoke had sent her careening into the past? Of course it fucking was, but so was careening into the past in general. She was not going to spend the rest of her life, however long it was, hauling barrels on and off ships in a world where a third of her daily income was required just to purchase enough food to keep her alive.

She gave up on the idea of a cushy boarding house with a bed. She was sticking with her shanty in the woods. She spent precious, sleepless hours hunting rabbits and pigeons in the twilight hours before she fell exhausted into a pile of burlap sacks that was serving as her bed. Every spare shilling, penny and pence she could get her exceedingly grubby hands on was squirreled away, saving up for passage to the island. The hardest part was conning Saul out of that damn map, he was so fucking proud of it. She was going to need to tap into her savings for some booze, and not your average rotgut, bastard drank that like water, something to really mess up his faculties, then she had to get him betting. What was a map when put up against cold hard cash, after all?


	3. Chapter 3

Tonight was the night. She’d scrimped and saved like the meanest of misers, and she had a tidy sum tied up in the one sock she had that wasn’t more hole than material. The other had died a brave death, long to be mourned in this world of rough woolen monstrosities. Tucking it all into the waistband of her stained and torn trousers, she sauntered into town, her hair all tucked up under a shapeless hat. A few folks called a greeting, used to seeing the tough-looking ‘lad’ around by now. Though not overly friendly, she made sure to touch her hat to the ladies. Manners counted, after all. If she had learned nothing from old Saul, she’d learned that at least.

Stopping at the general store she poured precious coins out onto the counter, grinning lopsidedly at the heavily moustachioed gentleman behind the counter. “Now then, Mister Phillips. The lads and I down dockside have worked right hard this week, and I was hoping that you’d part with a bottle of that fine brandy you’re so proud of. If we take to the tavern, they’ll have our week’s wages faster than a skinflint on the Sabbath. I know that you, at least, understand a hard day’s pay, and will give a lad a reasonable portion of libation for the appropriate amount of coin.” She winked, and the man laughed, shaking his head as he reached behind him for a dusty brown bottle.”

“You roughnecks get more charming by the year. I swear there must be something in that water. Had to send my oldest girl away, before you lot turned her head and went a-running to the parson.” He counted out a few coins, returning the rest to Rose. “Of course, with a face so pretty, I’m sure you have a fair few of the ladies hereabouts trying to con you into that mousetrap, eh my boy?” Phillips gave another hearty laugh, and Rose joined in, shaking her head in disagreement.

“Oh sir, if only it were so. I’m afraid lean pockets and a scarred face keep all the pretties decorating the walls when it’s my turn for a spin about the room. They want a handsome bugger that can keep them in bonbons and ribbons, and they’ll get naught but work and more work at my side.”

“Ach. Ain’t that the devil’s own truth though, my boy? You’re young yet, and have your fair field of wild oats to sew I wager. Just you wait, one of these days you’ll find a pretty face that will turn you fair foolish, and then you’ll change your tune. Whence that happens, you just remember you that Phillips knows how to convince the lush lasses that work isn’t the end of the world. Ask me own wife, prettiest pony to ride through three counties, but she could hardly see the other prospects on the field when I turned my full charm her way.”

Behind him a third laugh joined theirs. “Get on out of here with your daft nonsense, you old scoundrel. I fell for your glib tongue, sure enough, but I had no account of how hard you’d have me working for the privilege.” The blousy woman came sashaying out, stopping to buss her husband’s cheek in an uncharacteristic show of public affection. The shopkeeper and his wife had become Rose’s favourite in all of Northampton, friendly, and full of gossip. They were her one stop shop to keep her ear on the ground of what was bustling about the blooming borough. Mrs. Phillips came over and patted Rose’s hand. “Now don’t listen to that old rogue, Joey my lad. You work hard, flash those perfect teeth of yours and tell the lasses how you feel real honest, and they’ll be all a-flutter for you.”

Awkwardly Rose thanked the pair for their good-hearted advice, she couldn’t shatter their hopes with the fact that she wouldn’t be charming any girls, or anyone else for that matter, here in 1750. She had every intention of getting back to her own time. Somehow. Somewhere. She didn’t care what it was going to take, but she was praying that perhaps the secret would lay within Roanoke. It was the only lead she had, and though she knew the hazards of clinging to false hopes, what else did she have right now? The idea of staying here, in this time, was unfathomable.

Bottle in hand and a deck of cards in her pocket, the silver-haired mercenary marched off down to the docks to find Saul and the others. Time to bully the old drunks into a high stakes card game… well, high stakes for her. She idly thought of jobs she had done in what was now the future, where millions, and even lives, were represented by the markers on the table. Not one of those games had mattered as much as this one; one that would be played over a dollar bottle of brandy with some rough and ready dockworkers. She snorted. They had no idea the kind of poker face she had on her. That map was as good as in her hand.

Calling out a greeting as she approached the dockside shanty town where most of the men she worked amongst lived, she pasted on Joey’s amiable smile. The men had ribbed her about staking her claim out in the woods and eating rabbits when they had it so plush and close to work down here. Fish and feet. That’s what it smelled like, and if nothing else, that’s what had her scampering across town every morning and night around her hours of backbreaking labour. The real effort was pretending it was effort. Saul came out to greet her, his usual bottle of moonshine in one hand. “Ho there laddie. What brings you round on a Friday night? No ladies to court with that pretty face of yours?”

Rose suppressed a glare. Next person to ask her about courting was getting a boot upside their head. “Why bother with ladies, all they do is cost money. I thought instead I’d bring some libation and attempt to take some of yours. What do you say, Saul. Fancy a game of cards? Or are you afraid that a young buck like me has too many brains and will fleece you for all you’re worth?”

Saul laughed, shaking his head and gesturing behind him. “Cockiness like that deserves to be shot down a peg or two. Come along back, whipper-snapper. Me’n the boys will show you how a man plays cards. Bring that fancy bottle you got too. I’ll trade you for something that might finally put hair on your chest.” Laughing in response, since it was expected, Rose followed the old dockhand back through the shanties to a circle of crates and a table made of loose pier slats. Gauging the crowd, she grinned internally. Not a body present could out bluff her. She was betting her future on it.


	4. Chapter 4

Rose lay in the grass, staring up at the sky. Across her chest she clutched a flint-lock, muzzle-loading rifle. Something of English design, she thought. Tucked into her boot was a French-style butterfly knife. They were good weapons, reliable, but she missed her katanas like they were limbs that had been severed. She missed her armor and her vigilante gear. She missed running water and toilets that flushed. Cell phones. Wi-Fi. Credit Cards. The burlap sack she was resting on was coarse against her cheek as she turned her head, tucking her ruined eye away from sight. She missed her own time. This adventure was turning into a disaster.

Like the card game. She had every intention of leaving those gents the money and taking the map, but then they’d all gotten rowdy. The biggest problem? A few of the players were not free men, and when the Overseer had come to break things up, it had gotten ugly. She winced, remember the crack of the whip in the air and the slovenly man’s harsh voice. She’d had just enough to drink to forget that things here were different, that she couldn’t interfere. Instead she’d faced him down, catching the whip midair.

In the ensuing fight, she’d bodily lifted the big man, throwing him through the clapboard siding of the shanty. Rage had coursed through her, frustration at her situation, and it had taken three of her dock working companions to pull her off him. Shirt torn and eye wild, they’d figured out she was a girl. Unnatural. One of them had crossed himself, whispering that she must be some kind of witch to have tricked them. Or a demon. Superstitious bastards. She’d swiped the map off the table and ran. She’d ran through the night, and halfway through the next day, then fallen to the ground in exhaustion, sleeping where she dropped. She wasn’t sure how many days it took her to get to the next town, but even with her hair tucked up there’d been suspicious glances. Apparently she’d made the papers… the Overseer had died.

Rose closed her eye again, blocking out any doubts or guilt. Good people didn’t own other people. She just hoped that he’d already had all the children he was originally going to. That was the worst part of all this. Every death she caused could ripple into the future. Had she already hindered the population of wildlife in the area with her hunting? She’d probably changed history already with the scene she had caused in the dockside shanty town. Newspaper articles about a one-eyed witch with silver hair, wanted for murder. Fuck. She’d really gone and put her foot in it this time. At least here, in the woods, she was back by herself. Far away from any humans. Here she couldn’t affect the future that badly.

Pushing herself up, she pulled out the faded map, charting out her course. She’d made it to the mainland, though that had been a task and a half. If she never had to paddle her own boat again, it would be too soon. She had about two more days of walking along the coast, and then she’d have to find a way out to the island. She shuddered, knowing that in this day and age no one with any sense would be willing to paddle her over. The place was supposed to be haunted. No matter how loathe she was to do it, she was going to have to steal another boat, and go paddling through the ocean, hoping that the swells and waves didn’t send her too far off course. If she got lost at sea here, the chances of running into another craft were infinitesimal compared to in her own time.

Who decided paddles were such a great thing? She was going to find the inventor of the hated contraptions and punt them into the next dimension. Irritable now, she began taking apart her rifle, carefully cleaning each of the sections, before carefully putting it back together. She’d stolen it from a farmstead she’d passed, the owner had left it sitting out on a rocking chair on the porch. She snorted. What kind of world was she living in now, where people could just leave a gun, unattended, on their front step? It made no sense. She didn’t understand any of the rules here, and she didn’t want to, either.

She was tired of hiding. Tired of using her dead brother’s name. Weird as it seemed, she was even tired of being by herself. Back in her own time, if she was feeling that need for company all she ever had to do was head into the nearest diner. She could sit back, hat pulled low, and listen to the ebb and flow of conversation all around here. Not now. Now there was nothing and nobody for miles around. No cars. No long-haul truckers. No nosy neighbourhood watch. It was like falling into a nightmare with no end. Hell, there wasn’t even really any crime to catch her attention. The one thing that she wanted to fight the most was completely legal here, and would be for at least another hundred years. That was not only insane, but absolutely intolerable. She didn’t want to live in that kind of world.

That’s why she had to get to the site of the Roanoke colony. See if she could locate the artefact. See if it would take her home. She closed her eye, indulging in a moment of wishful thinking. She’d get the artefact, find herself back in her own time, and sit down with a massive burger, topped with processed cheese and those pickles that tasted kind of like plastic wrap. If she’d only known where she would end up over the course of a few short weeks, there were so many things she would have done differently, enjoyed more. Plus, she was leaving a job unfinished, and that alone was enough to get her goat.


	5. Chapter 5

Roanoke Island, site of the Lost Colony  

**Autumn, 1750**

Signs of habitation were being seen from the cursed island. Thin trails of smoke occasionally showed through the dense trees on dark nights, if one was looking carefully for them. A bold fur trapper had made his way to the island in order to make a few extra dollars, and came back with whispered tales of a pit of bones, sized small to large, that he had stumbled upon while scouting for the best locations to lay his traps. He was a big man, known for his bravery and skill, but the look in his eyes could only be described as haunted. He had been broken by what he had seen on the island. He mumbled quietly about a ruined eye and tangled white hair, and a laugh so cruel it made his skin crawl.

Curious eyes watched the shoreline, and a few bold fishermen brought their skiffs in closer to the shore of the island, looking for signs of habitation. Whispered words of a Siren having been sighted, or a mermaid. Hushed voices told of a flash of naked skin, scarred but beautiful, disappearing beneath the waves. No one had clearly seen what had taken up residence, but the rumours were rife with ideas. Some type of rare predator, a monster perhaps, a witch. Maybe whatever had destroyed the original colony had returned. No one was certain. All they knew was that none were willing to spend a night on the island. The risk was too great. They clutched their crosses and murmured prayers to their indifferent god.

Rose watched it all with cautious eyes. She hunted, she dug, she searched through the rotting ruins of the original encampment. Black dirt built up beneath her cracked nails. Her hands grew rough and scarred from grazing against roots and rocks. Her hair tangled into lank locks around her face as she became increasingly fervent in her search for the artefact that she was certain could take her back to her own time. She dug herself a small cave beneath a rocky hill. Here she kept her small treasures. Her gun, her knife, a stack of carefully whittled and burnt charcoal sticks and sheaves of birch bark peeled from trees with nearly illegible notes scratched across them. On one stony wall she made a map of what was quickly becoming in her thoughts _her_ island. Little “x” marks were scattered across the map, marking off the places she dug.

She only paused to break from her seeking to set her snare traps, to skin and smoke and eat. She knew nothing of curing furs, but she’d toss them in a pile, sleeping on them until the smell became unbearable, and then burying them near her bone pit. When she could not bear the scent of her own sweat combines with the faint odour of rotting animal flesh that clung so fiercely to her, she would venture out to the beach, to bathe and catch fish, a pleasant variance from squirrel and rabbit. Occasionally she would see fishing vessels, but she paid them no mind. They were inconsequential. All that mattered was the search. She had to get back. She could not stay in this time.

**Winter, 1750**

The figure had been seen again, late at night, on the ice at the edge of the island. A flash of dark against the snowy white background. No one was clear what the figure looked like. Some said it was a bear, or a wolf. Some said it was an ancient man, hunched and bearded. Still others said it was a ghostly female, with long white hair and eyes like blue fire. No one could prove they’d gotten close enough to see the figure. A group of hunters set out across the strait to investigate, tracking through a terrible storm. They found the bone pit spoken of so many months ago. The ground around it was brushed clean, no sign of tracks or any passage. They spent two weeks on the island, with no luck, despite its small size. All they found were holes, dug at regular intervals throughout the woods and clearing. They were baffled, but gave it little thought. They were too busy applauding their bravery, scoffing at the fishermen and their superstitions.

Then one of their party disappeared. The next morning, his body appeared on the bone pile. Throat slit. No one had heard whatever had left him there. As the brave men fled, the last man out could have sworn he heard a dark, female chuckle. They tried to stir up the populace. Burn the trees to the ground, smoke out the demon that had claimed the island as its home. They were interviewed for a national newspaper about their missing companion. No one had thought to bring home his body. Their stories were inconsistent, didn’t match up. The men were saved from mob justice due to their public popularity, and so they were taken up to New York City to be tried by a proper British court.

The invaders had left, and Rose’s world made sense again. They had come, big and loud, scaring the game and disturbing her digging. She had been digging only at night, to avoid the strange men on her island, but had drifted too close as she pursued what she thought was a lead across the island. When she heard him coming, she had scurried up the nearest tree, but he had spotted her handprint in the loose dirt. With little choice, she had sprung at him from overhead, slitting his throat in a neat stroke of her knife, kept sharp on the edges of stones. He had not even had time to call out.

She watched the men flee, thoughts more wild and feral than any she’d had before running through her mind. She emptied her cave, moving her treasures to the other side of the island. With painstaking slowness, she recreated her map on a new rock, big, but still portable. She wept when she blotted out the old one and filled in her cave home, and then cursed. The rage within her screaming for release. She quenched it, chasing down a young buck through the woods and tearing into it with her teeth. Blood coursed down her throat, and she felt calm again.

**Spring, 1751**

The ice began to melt, and with it, curious eyes once more turned to Roanoke Island. Up in NYC the trial of the hunters raged on, their wild tales of the feral witch becoming more fantastical and disparate with each retelling. Perhaps it was a group hallucination. Maybe they had simply eaten some off meat, out there on their own. Regardless, the body was needed to back up their claim, and an expedition was formed. They would go to Roanoke Island and find the fallen hunter, if indeed his body could be found. His companions would be proven either guilty or innocent, hopefully, and this sordid tale of magic and mayhem could be banished back to the realm of obsessive scholars. The expedition group, calling itself a “Committee of Vigilance” prepared to head over to the island and see what could be seen.

Meanwhile, Rose had turned up mountains of artifacts in her digging. Pottery and arrowheads, bones and tools. None of them, however, were _the_ artefact that she was so desperate to find. Some days, she forgot that there was a purpose to her digging. She’d find herself at the bottom of a hole, ten, maybe even fifteen feet deep, with no recollection of how she got there, or how the hole had come to be. She was losing time, and worse, she was losing parts of herself. She had, however, gained new skills. She could catch a fish bare handed, she rarely found her snares empty, she had even managed to tan a few animal hides, using brain and grease from the fat, so that her bed didn’t regularly decay like a rotting corpse. She was… surviving, but the pain of her failure to find what she had come out here for drove her further into herself. She had not seen another human in over three months, and she had not spoken since she had journeyed out to the island the previous summer.


	6. Chapter 6

The Committee of Vigilance set out for the island mid-morning. Armed with pistols and swords, dressed in the finest hunting gear money could buy, they were as prepared as they could be for the hunt ahead. The leader of the expedition, Arthur Percival Fredrickson the Third, was proud of the figure they cut, his carefully chosen men, as they manned the oars, crossing the channel to the supposedly accursed isle. He did not hold with the nonsense talk of witches and hauntings. He was certain all they would find on the island was the decaying corpse of a man who had been killed and robbed by his own companions. It was a sad state, when a hunter could not trust his bosom companions.

Arthur would not risk such a thing. Each of his men had been chosen because of their stalwart spirits and steadfast loyalty. Connor McGuire had stood beside him on the battlefield during the Anglo-Spanish wars. The man had a way with a sword that made it look like it was dancing. Louis Grenville was a local trapper and trader, known for his stickler-like devotion to fairness. He and Arthur had been business partners for years, despite the other man’s French heritage. The last man of their party, a hulking figure with skin as dark as moonless night went only by the name of Jim. He had earned his freedom defending Arthur himself from marauders on the road to New York City. Of all the companions, he was the one Arthur trusted most.

On the island, perched amidst the branches of a tree just beginning to thicken with foliage, Rose glared at the approaching skiff. A growl started in the back of her throat as they drew ever closer to her island. This place had become her sanctuary and her own personal purgatory all rolled into one. She had long since abandoned wearing her eye patch, there was no one here to see the ruined pit where her eye had once been. The scars were pale and pink, having healed long ago, but they twisted what was once a beautiful face into something macabre. Perfection and destruction, all in a limited space. Her hair hung in long, limp locks around her head, knotted and full of various twigs, dirt and debris. With the furs that made up the places where her clothing had not survived the wear and tear of wilderness living, she looked every inch the witch that the last group of hunters had called her.

Bare footed, she climbed down the trunk of the tree like any other creature of the woods, moving silently through the natural refuse that littered the forest floor, skirting around holes of various depths that she had dug over the long months. Some of them she filled with bones, with treasures she had dug up, or with supplies, all to be buried again later, their locations fixed in her mind. She was like an over-sized and dangerously predatory squirrel, storing everything for some undefined later. This had been the first morning she had not dug. Finally, she had accepted the fact that the artefact that she searched for was not here, not on this island, at least not at this time. It was a bitter realization, but she accepted it. For better or worse, she was trapped here, in this time, with no foreseeable way back to her future.

That was fine. She had everything she needed to survive here, on this island. Better still, back here in the past, there was no Slade Wilson to stalk her, forcing his brutal training onto her whenever the whim struck, before declaring her a failure and disappearing again. His blitzkrieg parenting style was a thing of the future, one that she would never have to deal with again. A vicious smile spread across her face as she began to cover some of the open pits with branches and leaves. She had learned more than enough from him to get by in this new old world. This was her island, and she would defend it from any incursion. As if she couldn’t hunt brightly dressed fools with her eyes closed.

Biding her time, she watched as the men landed and set up camp, the dark skinned gentleman among them clearly doing the lion’s share of the work. With a furrowed brow, Rose decided that if he was smart enough to flee, she would allow him to leave this island. In this day and age, his people suffered enough. She’d not kill him if she could avoid it. Instead she turned her investigation to the others. The slightly greying popinjay standing and giving directions clearly considered himself the leader, so that was who she would eliminate first. Circling for a better view, she watched as he huffed and berated, but rarely did any actual work himself. The others, however, seemed content to follow his lead. Perhaps there was more to him than she could see. The bearded redhead carried a ridiculous number of guns on his person, but considering how ineffectual and unreliable the current flintlocks were, Rose supposed that if one was going to make them a main weapon, it was best to have spares. She dismissed him as a non-threat. Guns in this time were loud and hard to aim. She could dodge anything he aimed at her.

The last man, wrapped in almost as many furs as she was, was an entirely different matter. He had several long knives and even a bow and arrows. Unlike the others, he moved as if he was comfortable here, on the edge of the woods. Perhaps more than the leader, this man posed a problem. Slinking back into the shadows of the trees, she considered her options. Cut off the head and the snake will die, yes, but remove its teeth and all it can do is flail about. Chewing the chapped edge of her lips, she retreated to her current den, a large rock with most of the dirt beneath scraped away. It was barely enough space for her slender form to wriggle beneath, but it made her feel safe. Here she would rest until night time, plotting exactly how she was going to remove this new problem from her island.


	7. Chapter 7

The next morning dawned bright and cool, a late season frost dusting the edges of everything with a white lace. Rose awoke as the first crimson streaks shot across the clouds, heralding the dawn’s arrival. Dragging herself from her den, she stretched, working whatever kinks and stiffness had settled into her joints out as the chilly air invigorated her senses. This morning she had a clear purpose. She would hunt. Limber once more, she tracked back through the island towards a large oak tree. Above, the dead branches bore no leaves, and she carefully dragged herself halfway up to find the hole carved right through the dying behemoth. Here she withdrew several tiny knives, some no bigger than a blow dart, painstakingly chipped and carved from bone. She tested each edge on the pad of her thumb, wiping the bloody streak off on her fur-clad stomach with a grunt of contentment.

Carefully she threaded the smallest blades into her matted hair, tucking larger ones within her furs. The longest, fourteen inches from point to hilt and carved from the metatarsal bone of a deer, she kept in hand, giving it a few practice swings. The heft of it was more akin to a short sword than the katanas she was used to, but she was confident in her ability to wield it. Bladed weapons had been her forte for the entire extent of her adult and adolescent life, after all. Slade had occasionally trained with a short sword, and she doubted that any of the gentlemen currently occupying her territory had ever come up against someone who wielded a blade the way she did, nor could they hope to match her speed or strength. Armed, she headed to the far side of the isle, keeping low in the treeline along the rocky beaches. From here she made a wide sweep, around until she neared the camp sight of the interlopers.

The Committee of Vigilance had gotten a slow start to the morning. Grenville was already out searching the island, but in the camp McGuire and Frederickson were sitting around a smoky fire while Jim puttered about making something resembling a breakfast. Frederickson, a beautifully carved pipe in hand, leaned against a tree stump, puffing away. “You see McGuire, there’s really no point in ganging up at the crack of dawn like Monsieur Grenville. What we’ll find, at best, is some rotting bones and a scrap of fabric and then we can head off back home quick as you please. I think the Frenchman is too prone to flights of fancy, believe the tales of a witch or Wildman of some kind on this God-forsaken hunk of dirt. Don’t you agree, Jim?”

The big man didn’t answer, though McGuire noticed the former slave’s grip on the pan was shaking, eyes wide as they stared into the underbrush. Rising, the Scot got up, poking his saber into the bushes and rattling them about, though he saw nothing. “Oi Jim, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. What’s got you all a-fluster?” Closing his eyes slowly, the big man swallowed, wiping a hand down his face and crossing himself deliberately, as if faith alone could protect him against whatever horror he had seen. The other two men prodded a bit more, until finally the big man spoke.

“Off in th’bushes, I saw something frightful. One eye like ice, t’other a scarred pit. Hair as white as any old granny, but the face youthful, pretty even ‘cept them scars. Weren’t the face that was frightful though, sir. Was the hate in her gaze. That’un out there, she plans to kill us all sure as she did that other. If’n you want my opinion, I think we should go home, sir, afore we all end up dead as that one hunter fella.” Not generally one for big speeches, Jim settled back into grim silence, his eyes scanning the brush along the edge of the encampment warily.

“Though I appreciate your candor, my good fellow, we are here to perform a duty! If this figure you think you saw is real, we much find them and bring them to justice. We are a Committee of Vigilance, after all, dear Jim. Surely one flash of a face in the bushes is not enough to rattle your bravery and send you running home with your tail between your legs?” With a hearty laugh, Frederickson seated himself back against his stump, tapping out his pipe in favour of selecting some bread and cheese from the provisions pouch. “Come now, Connor. Leave the poor trees be. I’m sure it was likely a civet or other such creature, Jim is just being fanciful.”

Backing away from the camp, Rose shook her head in disgust. The three gentlemen left at camp were barely a blip on the radar in regards to being a threat to her. She would come take care of them later. Instead, she set herself to finding the trail signs left by the man who had been adorned in furs, Grenville, the popinjay had called him. That one was taking his task seriously, and Rose was certain that she did not wish to encounter him on any terms other than her own. Why give your enemy the upper hand, when it was so easy to take it for yourself?

Since Louis had left the signs specifically to allow his compatriots to follow, if they so chose, it wasn’t difficult to pick up his trail. Ever vigilant for a trap or ambush, Rose carried along behind, following his path along the island. He had circled several of her still exposed holes, and marked more than a few that she had set up as pit traps. With a grim smile, Rose carefully erased his markers. Just because he could locate the problem didn’t mean the idiots he had traveled with could. Finally she froze, listening carefully at the edge of a clearing. Ahead a man was cursing in a mess of French, English, and a third language that she was certain belonged to an indigenous tribe, though she was also certain it wasn’t local. Too guttural.

Peering through the foliage, Rose smiled to herself. The man had come across one of her bone pits, and was, amidst the cursing, praying as he knelt at the edge, examining the contents. Apparently the scene had unsettled him somewhat. Tightening her grip on the handle of her blade, Rose chose her moment, sidling up behind him and pressing the point of the blade into the back of his neck. “Monsieur je regrette mon fouillis. It seems to have caused you distress.” The man froze, and Rose watched the tension in his shoulders, the way his fingers grasped at empty air. Her voice sounded strange, even to her. It was rusty with disuse, deeper and raspier than her memory of it.

“So you will kill me now, sorcière. Unarmed and in the back?”

A bitter laugh escaped her lips, harsh as nails on a chalkboard. “You think I am honourable, monsieur? Quelle naïveté. I saw your many sharp knives. I think we would have a very good fight, but then your friend with all the guns would show up and ruin it. So yes, unarmed and in the back.” The Frenchman’s muscles bunched as he tried to dive away, but Rose’s unique precognitive ability flashed a moment before. As he tried to move, her sharp bone blade slid between the vertebrae at the top of his spine, severing it. She watched with a blank face as he collapsed, like a marionette with its strings cut. His blood pooled beneath him as he choked, struggling to speak.

Kneeling beside the man, she placed her rough fingers on his forehead, dragging them down to close his eyes. “Dormez bien. Vous étiez plus digne que le reste.” She remained there for a time, watching as he bled out, listening to his last, laboured breaths. When he finally stopped trying to move, she hefted him up against the tree nearest the bone pit. From a cubby in the side of the pit she pulled a length of strong rope, made from animal sinew braided together. Using this she tied the trapper’s corpse to the tree. Ripping open his shirt, she carved a large “R” into his chest, and then headed back to her den. She would sleep for awhile, and then see if the hunters had gotten her message.


	8. Chapter 8

Rose awoke to the sounds of masculine distress. Though it was further into the wooded area, the sound travelled well across the quiet space between them. That was one thing she had learned to appreciate during her stay in this time. That stillness that allowed sound to carry. There was no buzz of electronics, no harsh and fervent city sounds. Just the buzz of insects, a rustling of plant life, and a gentle silence that wrapped around all of it. She lay in her scraped out den for a time, simply listening to the men’s voices. The yelling, the fear and anger that tinted it all. The fancy man with his posh accent had thought her a figment of the imagination, but she had proven that she was real. That she was here. She existed.

Curling her hand into a fist she examined the broken and filthy array of her fingernails, dirt and blood staining the cuticles, thick callouses changing the very shape of her fingers, hiding the scars that the once pale flesh had borne. Sometimes she didn’t recognize the hand as her own. It was as if it belonged to someone else. Some wild creature more suited to this new world she had found herself in. It still had her strength, though. Her skills had not dimmed. If anything, being here, with her chosen territory to defend, she had become harsher. All interlopers, be they on two feet or four, bled out beneath her blade. There could be no survivors.

Quiet feet led her up a tree, moving quietly through the canopy as if she were just another of the furred residents of this forsaken isle. Perched amidst the branches, she watched as Jim cut the trapper down, eyes darting to and fro, seeking for whatever monster had killed and then desecrated their companion’s body. A self-satisfied smirk danced across her face, laughter barely suppressed as the man with all the guns patrolled the perimeter of the small clearing, guns drawn and wary. The fancy man with his big talk was sweating, producing most of the sounds of distress as I attempted to give orders, hands flailing in the air futilely as he attempted to make his point.

Pulling a small blade from her locks, no longer than her middle finger and sharp as a razor, she moved around the clearing to get into better position. She gauged the distance, the wind, the targets, weighing the odds and the risks. Satisfied, she hauled back and launched the dart with all her strength. It whizzed silently through the air, almost invisible until it sprouted from the eye of the bearded man. He staggered back with a howl of pain, but kept his guns, which impressed Rose more than she would ever care to admit. Instead of covering his face he raised the pistols, shooting in the direction her missile had emerged from. Bullets whizzed by either side of the mercenary, one lucky shot grazing her shoulder. With a hiss, she pulled deeper into the canopy, launching herself away from the clearing with a shaking of branches.

A shout behind her, and the lumbering form of Jim came into view. Though the whites of his eyes showed in fear, he did as he was bid and pursued her. Treetop to treetop she led him on a merry chase, his broad stride eating up the ground below her as he matched her pace. She led him deeper into her territory, towards her most recent digging grounds. Luck was on the big man’s side as he narrowly avoided stepping into any of her covered pits, but she doubted such luck would hold forever. Once they were far enough that she was certain the others had not joined the chase, she stopped, dropping to the ground. The big man halted as well, sweat and terror stinking up the air around them. Between them, a pile of leaves and branches covered a particularly nasty pit trap, the bottom filled with sharpened wooden spears. Rose laughed her rusty laugh, full of cruelty and the promise of death, and the man shuddered, his nostrils flaring. She spread her hands, showing them empty. “You I would prefer not to kill. Your people suffer enough.”

“You’re a witch and a murderer, for certain. I can’t just let you be free. If you come back, Mr. Frederickson will make sure you see a fair trial. He’s a good man.” She shook her head, running a hand through her hair and coming out with another bone blade. From the expression on Jim’s face, and the way he crossed himself, apparently it looked like magic. “You keep your curse weapons away from me, I don’t want to hurt you, even if you killed Mister Grenville.”

“I didn’t want to hurt you either, Jim, but you came here to my island, trying to make me leave. That can’t happen. I’m waiting for it to arrive.” His confusion matched the jumble in her head. She couldn’t remember what she was waiting for, she just knew it might be here. She was digging to find it, and it would turn up if she were patient, and undisturbed. She couldn’t risk leaving the island. Not yet. While the big man was still trying to figure out what she was on about, Rose let the small blade fly. He was quicker than a man his size should have been, jerking out of the way enough that instead of embedding in his throat, it just grazed the side of his cheek. She gently traced fingers along the scar on her own cheek, higher, and leading up to her eye, and laughed. Turning to flee into the woods.

Behind her she heard a crash as Jim lunged forward to pursue her, crashing through the cover of the pit trap. Coming back around, she peered into the pit, a good fifteen feet down, to see his broken body impaled on her wooden spikes. He wasn’t dead, but the bleeding would do him in once the shock wore off. She perched on the edge of the pit, her legs hanging above his head as she watched him with impassive, uncaring eyes. She would have preferred to let him go, but his death did not trouble her. He was just another animal, just like the squirrels, and deer, and the trapper she had killed to maintain her survival. Just like her.


	9. Chapter 9

Late that night, Rose struggled to pull the large man’s body from the bottom of the pit. She had stood by, silently watching and judging, as his companions had found him, their voices filling the air with foul curses, aimed at the witch they thought she was. From her tree top perch she had smiled. If they had ever truly met a witch, their tongues would not be so free. She imagined the stuffed shirt popinjay saying such things to one such as Klarion, and it made her smile. For a moment, she remembered who she had been, back before she was swept away to this crude world full of its simple savageries. Was it any wonder she had run wild at the first opportunity? Even in a time with flushing toilets she had been a hunter of men, tempted by violence.

Something tacky and oozing dribbled down the side of her neck, and Rose nearly dropped the corpse she was hauling in surprise. While she had been wool-gathering, Jim’s body had been steadily starting the process of rigor mortis and decay, with little concern for the state of her furs. With a muttered curse she brought her attention back to the task at hand. Laying the body carefully on the ground, she spent a moment looking into the empty eyes of the big black man. She wasn’t regretful, not really, but she would have preferred not to kill him. Unfortunately, statements had to be made. With her bone knife she carved a ragged R into his massive chest, and then lifted the corpse into a modified fireman’s carry, hindered by the stiffness of the dead man.

At the quietest point of the night, when even the nocturnal creatures had hunted their fill, Rose crept up towards the campsite of the remaining members of the Committee of Vigilance, the second of their fallen comrades upon her thin shoulders. Neither of the men were standing watch, both snoring loudly near the glowing coals of a fire that had sputtered and died. The bearded man now wore a makeshift eyepatch, and the silver-haired girl’s fingers curled around the cold flesh of her burden, longing for the familiar feel of leather against her puckered skin once more. That was the mien of a different Wilson though. She was no longer one who would bear such symbols.

Moving silently, she placed the body of the former slave on the ground, equidistant between Frederickson and McGuire. There wasn’t much she could do with his twisted limbs, but she did her best to make it seem like he was in gentle repose as the last of the embers died down in the fire pit. A snorting sound escaped the bearded man with all the guns, and Rose drifted across the small clearing to examine where he lay. It would be so easy, simply to end them both here. She wanted the world to understand that her island was off-limits. That there was nothing for anyone here but death. She pondered, chewing on her lip as she huddled close over the body. Should she kill them all, or leave one alive to tell the tale?

Another snort broke the silence, and the Scot’s remaining eye slowly blinked open, bleary with sleep until they locked on the figure above him. He drew breath to shout, but Rose’s finger covered her lips, her head tilting to one side, her face strangely devoid of human emotion. McGuire choked on the halted sound, terrified of the silvery-haired figure above him. In a harsh whisper, his accent thick and the words stumbling over each other, he spoke. “Be ye the White Lady then? Have mercy, I beg ye. I didnae ken this was yer home. I swear I’ll be quit of it come morn if ye just leave me be, spirit.”

That rusty, grating laugh escaped the mercenary’s lips again, quite and ethereal in the darkness of a night lit by naught more than the moon overhead. Standing, she moved away from the man, pausing by the body of Jim. The gunman sat upright, eye widening again as he saw what she now stood over, his boots kicking up dirt as he attempted to push himself as far away from her as he could. “Right now. I’m leavin’ right now, Lady, I swear it. I doona care what ye did to th’poor bastards. I just want to leave. Please, lady.” It had been a long time since she had seen a grown man cry from fear, but she recognized the acrid stench that now emanated from him. He’d soiled himself. With another hoarse chuckle, she raised a hand, pointing towards the beach.

Without even attempting to wake Frederickson, McGuire grabbed his bag and fled the clearing. Rose waited, listening to the sounds of a rowboat being set to water, and the rhythmic sound of paddles cutting water. Smiling to herself, she turned to the leader of the men, the one who was supposed to guide and guard them, and snorted. He was the least of them, yet she had saved him for last. Watching the rise and fall of his chest, she crossed the spent coals of the fire to where he slumbered on. With one vicious stroke she severed his jugular. Arthur came awake just as the life fled his body, one impassive blue eye the last thing he ever saw.

Over the remains of the evening, Rose drug the three bodies of the men to the beach, each time checking the progress of McGuire’s rowboat, until he had passed out of sight. Together with the bones of the first hunter, she lay the men out in the sand, her own private warning to any who would venture onto the island she had claimed. None would be welcomed. All interlopers would suffer the same fate. Satisfied that her message was as clear as she could make it, Rose returned to her woods. Back to this new life she had forged for herself. She would hunt. She would dig. She would fade away until she was no more than any other beast that haunted the isle, untouched by the tales Connor McGuire would spread to all who would listen, of the White Lady, a spectre of death, half her face hauntingly beautiful, the other marred by a hideous scar, who moved like lightning and killed without blinking.


End file.
